Posts tagged: SEO

Search engines, data aggregators and social websites are in the midst of releasing the most popular searches and most popular content for 2011. So what did 2011 look like on the worldwide web? Let’s take a look!

Google Zeitgeist has an unbelievable amount of data sliced-and-diced any way you want it, but their 10 fastest-rising global queries are as follows:

Rebecca Black

Google+

Ryan Dunn

Casey Anthony

Battlefield 3

iPhone 5

Adele

東京 電力

Steve Jobs

iPad 2

What struck me as fascinating was the number 8 search, being the Japanese kanji for the utility company Tepco in Fukushima that was damaged during the earthquake in May. Google notes that the search interest “rose so quickly and at such high volume that the keyword landed a spot on our fastest rising list, despite Japanese-language representing only 4.7% of total Internet users.”

Yahoo has also released their comprehensive Top 10 lists as well, all of which can be found on Yahoo’s Year in Review.

Yahoo’s top search terms for 2011 in the United States were as follows:

iPhone

Casey Anthony

Kim Kardashian

Katy Perry

Jennifer Lopez

Lindsay Lohan

“American Idol”

Jennifer Aniston

Japan Earthquake

Osama bin Laden

Diving in deeper in Yahoo’s data, the top news stories search for in the United States were:

Casey Anthony Trial

Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

Royal Wedding

Death of Osama bin Laden

Unemployment

Arizona Shooting

Death of Amy Winehouse

Arab Spring

Libya/Death of Moammar Gadhafi

Occupy Wall Street

In addition to data provided directly from search engines, we wanted to show you what Experian Hitwise has compiled. Hitwise is a “search intelligence” marketing company and has as usual provided a year-end wrap up of data to sift through. You can get some very granular data covering 2011 search data through their blog post here but here are two high-level data points worth checking out:

Facebook continues to dominate online usage, taking the number 1 spot for most visited website for the second year in a row and commands four varations in top search queries.

Also of note is the disappearance of MySpace both as a Top 10 search query and a top 10 visited website.

Lastly, Facebook has revealed the most shared articles for 2011. These are all news-based content so it would appear that content like YouTube videos or images are not part of this list.

What will be in store for us in 2012? Somewhere in the 4th dimension lies in wait the next Rebecca Black, the next scandalous trial and the next world-shaking death. For current events and news oriented websites, knowing what has come before will help for the future in terms of keyword research, title optimization and social sharing. Prepare yourself!

Ryan Miller is the SEO Manager for Advance Digital, and provides best practice techniques for improving your search visibility. You can follow him on Twitter @cromiller and add him to your circles on Google+.

The end of 2011 is quickly approaching, and with it comes the plethora of aggregated content touting “Best of” lists and the “Year in Review”. If you have a website that is current events focused, whether that be local news coverage, reviews of new releases in media (movies, TV, music, video games, etc) or updates on a professional or personal field of interest you will have content perfect for compiling for current and new readers alike.

But what lists should you start with and how can you optimize your content so that it can be found by searchers? You can find all that you need right at your fingertips from the search engines. Using auto suggest terms via Google, Google News and Bing will provide some great topics that people may be interested in. Start typing in “2011 Year in Review” “2011 Top” or “Best of 2011” and you’ll be presented with an eclectic assortment of ideas to get your mind tingling with content ideas.

Don’t forget you can have a little bit of fun here as well with “Worst of” or “Bottom 10” lists, which can certainly spark an emotional reaction among your readers and is always good for sharing. For bloggers that may publish about more personal topics or don’t fit neatly into a “Best of” review, think about compiling content that might bring newer readers to some of your older content. If you publish a photography blog for instance, put together a selection of your best photos from the year so that readers can be exposed to your full body of work.

Once you have a few topics you’ll want to sculpt your title and content. Make sure that your actual post headline contains the topic idea you are targeting near the beginning of the headline and as one unbroken keyword phrase, such as “2011 Top 10 Video Games”. The summary content that you write about for each piece within this post should be unique, do not just copy and paste a paragraph from a previously published older article. Think about adding reflective thoughts, mentioning update information that may not have been available at the time the original post was written and similar-themed ideas. Add a link to the original content on your website if it is available so readers can find more details about your selections. You should encourage your readers to submit their own lists in the comments, with a potential follow-up post highlighting a few readers.

As you’re writing your content, and to make your post standout from other websites that may be covering similarly compiled lists, consider giving an item that should deserve the number 1 or 2 slot a much lower ranking or leaving that choice off the list completely. This may invoke your readers to leave comments about your choices, share the content within their online social circles and offer up some additional linkbaiting incentive. For instance, using our “2011 Top 10 Video Games” as a reference, you could leave off the very popular Modern Warfare 3. As a fair warning though, tread lightly in this area, as you don’t want to be seen as out of touch with your area of expertise.

Once you’ve published your content, you can do some internal linkbuilding to help with some initial keyword targeting. Promote the content on your homepage, and go back to your older posts that are now featured in your list and add a link notating that it made your Best Of selection, using the topic’s full title as your linked anchor text. Also, be sure to get your new content into your social media channels as soon as possible. This kind of content is ripe for sharing and can generate some great discussion on your website and your social properties!

Ryan Miller is the SEO Manager for Advance Digital, and provides best practice techniques for improving your search visibility. You can follow him on Twitter @cromiller and add him to your circles on Google+.

Earlier this week, Google announced and rolled out two major updates in how they provide Places Profile data for businesses directly from the search result pages. One is targeted for search results for a specific business while the other is targeted for non-branded geo-targeted business searches, and both reinforce just how important it is to have a claimed Places Profile that has been optimized.

Let’s take a look first at how Google is updating results when doing a branded search for a business, that is, the search contains the actual business’ name. We’ll do a search for my favorite Thai restaurant, Pad Thai in Highland Park, NJ:

As you can see, the search for “Pad Thai Highland Park” is a detailed enough search to bring up the specific restaurant. While the organic search results on the left hand do not appear affected, you’ll notice immediately that on the right hand where there previously was just a map and paid results, there is now information displayed about the restaurant being pulled directly from the Places Profile.

For comparison about what is being pulled, here is a view of Pad Thai’s profile:

Almost all of the text details information and links to reviews are available directly from the Google’s search results, without having to click-through to the profile. One thing to note in this example is that the photos of the food are not displayed in the right sidebar in the search results. This is because the photos are being highlighted from the restaurant’s website, rather than having been uploaded directly to the Places Profile. If the business were to upload them directly, some of the photos would have shown in the right sidebar. This is just one of several missed opportunities for the business, who it should be noted have yet to claim this listing.

The second update for non-branded locally-focused business searches. Now, after eating some super spicy thai food, I need to cool down with a few glasses of beer, so let’s do a search for “New Brunswick bars”:

This search gives me several destinations in the area in the organic results and a map on the right hand side as usual. However, if I roll over the instant previews arrow on one of the local listings, now after a second or two the right hand sidebar updates to show details from that specific Places Profile much like we saw when searching for a specific business:

Google has been putting more and more emphasis on their Places Profiles over the last few years, and it’s no surprise with 20% of all searches done on Google having local intent and 40% of all searches on mobile devices having local intent). This latest update once again reinforces how vital it is for local businesses to claim and optimize their listings as part of an online marketing strategy, as users will now be able more easily compare multiple businesses all without even leaving the Google search results page. Now get out there, get claimed and get optimized! [Google Inside Search]

Ryan Miller is the SEO Manager for Advance Digital, and always on the lookout for great Thai restaurants and local dive bars. You can follow him on Twitter @cromiller and add him to your circles on Google+.

This week a new website, http://googlenewsrankingfactors.com, was launched to outline the positive and negative things that news publication websites can do to rank in Google News. This information is based on a survey of the top SEO experts in the field of news optimization, including Advance Internet’s own John Carcutt, who was hand selected to participate.

The website includes essential information such as:

Top 10 Most Important Google News Ranking Factors

Top 10 Negative Google News Ranking Factors

Article Page Keyword Factors

Article Page Non-Keyword Factors

Time-Based Factors

The following is a press release published in coordination with the launch of the website.

How Does an Article Get to the Top of Google News?

PASADENA, CA—(Marketwire – Sep 22, 2011) – Today at the Online News Association conference in Boston, MA, Perfect Market, Inc., Local SEO Guide and Newsknife released a new survey detailing never before seen insights into how articles are ranked by Google News — www.googlenewsrankingfactors.com. Respondents included the news publishing industry’s most influential online strategists. Participating news SEOs have worked with publishers including The New York Times Company, The Tribune Company, Time Warner and Conde Nast.

The result of the survey is a list of the “Top Ten Most Important Google News Ranking Factors,” including tactical approaches and insider commentary on emerging trends. The report reveals many new insights about how to get content ranked highly on Google News and also clarifies myths and misperceptions around how articles make it to the top of the Google News page.

News ranking factors may surprise many online strategists. Unlike ranking factors in Google.com, where domain authority is widely believed to carry influence, ‘category authority’ is “massively important” when determining Google News rank. Similarly, ‘authority’ matters, but it’s much more likely the category focus of the site pulls more weight within the news ranking algorithm.

Other insights from the survey include the fact that being the first to publish isn’t necessarily important when determining Google News rank while neither is the publisher’s authority.

Commentary:“Media companies are particularly interested in learning more about the ins and outs of Google News ranking factors, which are quite different than the standard Page Rank algorithms associated with web search optimization,” said Tim Ruder, chief revenue officer, Perfect Market. “News SEO requires an intricate, specialized understanding. My colleague Sheigh Crabtree and I are grateful to the news SEO experts who participated in this survey, lent us their expertise and helped form the analysis for this groundbreaking research.”

“Ranking for top stories in Google News is the Holy Grail for news sites, yet there has been little public discussion within the SEO community of how to do it,” said Andrew Shotland of Local SEO Guide. “As an SEO consultant who has worked on some of the largest news brands in the world, I thought others would benefit from asking some of the best SEOs out there to share their knowledge of how Google News works.”

“Clearly news publications that rank consistently at the top of Newsknife spend effort to get there,” said Neil Pharazyn, founder of Newsknife. “These Google News ranking factor insights will give news SEOs a better focus on what works.”

Google, in association with Intuit, is rolling out state-by-state an initiative to get small and local businesses online. The first state targeted is Texas, and the full details can be found at http://www.texasgetonline.com/

The promotion provides qualified businesses an assortment of free services for the first year of the contract, and is designed to get businesses involved and working with online advertising space. As part of the program, businesses can expect to receive at no cost:

A free, easy-to-build, professional website

A free customized domain name and hosting for one year

A free local business listing on Google Places

A free customized domain name and hosting for one year

A free local business listing on Google Places

Free tools, resources, and local events

$75 Google Adwords coupon

After one year of service, the business may maintain their website for a monthly fee. There are some limitations to the hosted website as well; it must be built on Intuit’s Website Builder using their templates, and the free website is limited to three pages.

Beyond the monthly cost after the first year, a deeper look into the offer reveals plenty of opportunities for the business to be upsold by Intuit, including costs to have more pages on the website, email service, and the ability to run an ecommerce website. For Google, this is an opportunity to get more detailed business content into their Places section to drive search traffic and to get businesses hooked on using Adwords.

This service is not for businesses that already have any established online presence, but is instead targeted toward businesses that have zero online presence and are looking for a way to break into the digital space for the first time and get their name out there.This is not a SEO or comprehensive marketing service by any conceivable means.

How Can Agencies Respond to Prospects That Ask About This Service?

While agencies’ products and services may differ in terms of deliverables, KPIs and goals, there are some overall truths that can universally apply when discussing with prospects:

The adage “you get what you pay for” is important here.This is a free service and designed to give businesses the absolute barebones online presence.

This service is not intended for businesses that already have a website and are serious about increasing their online visibility, market share and client base.

This is not a search engine optimization service for businesses. Businesses will not receive keyword research from SEO professional that will target converting traffic.

This service does not provide any external link building to the business website, or any business citation listings on other local directories, both of which are key elements for the success of natural SEO and Local SEO respectively.

This service does not include any social media options to leverage connecting clients and businesses on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.

This is a “do it yourself” service, and relies on the business to set-up and maintain. It does not provide the staff support that comes with agency product packages that may include filling out the Google Places Profile, writing keyword-rich META content, writing quality site content, providing site audits and recommendations, link building etc.

Is The Service Worth It?

For businesses that are expanding into the online space for the very first time, do not have budget to fully invest in online marketing and aren’t afraid to get their hands a little dirty, the Get Your Business Online route works as a good stepping stone to see what online marketing has to offer.

For any businesses though that are seriously looking to invest in online marketing, the best bet is to begin speaking with a trusted SEO Agency that can provide expert knowledge and a comprehensive strategy to meet your goals.

Ryan Miller is the SEO Manager for Advance Internet. You can follow him on Twitter @cromiller and add him to your circles on Google+.